Birmingham City Council’s latest fire and rehire threat to make striking bin workers redundant hasn’t come from a position of strength. Agency bin crews have begun being disrupted again by activists using creative tactics to get around the council and West Midlands Police’s use of a court injunction to stop Unite members blocking lorries.
The lengths the council was willing to go to try and break the strike was shown when an agency driver was filmed mounting the kerb and driving at pedestrians, and the very next day was seen going out on his rounds again as if nothing had happened!
Announcing the fire and rehire plans to the press before bin workers themselves got to hear of it, the council implied that it was breaking off negotiations. But council management have been dodging talks with Unite for several weeks now, and refusing to involve either council leader John Cotton or the government-appointed commissioners in them at any point since the strike began in January.
Support for the bin workers remains high among the public and the workers movement. Now is the time to turn this into action. The megapicket on Friday 25th supported by Strike Map and the National Shop Stewards Network is an opportunity to start a pattern of union members and other activists regularly attending bin depots and other key sites including scab firm Tom White and the local incinerator.
Likewise a national Saturday demonstration against council cuts and in support of the strike could cut across the council’s attempts to intimidate bin workers and their families by issuing letters threatening redundancy and put the pressure back on the commissioners and their paymasters in central government to stop the attacks on Unite members livelihoods.
As a result of its actions around the strike and years of cuts, Birmingham Labour faces electoral oblivion at next year’s council elections with only 5% of residents planning to vote for them. In a panic move Labour is now reported to have blocked 14 councillors who have been mildly critical of Cotton’s leadership from standing for re-election in the hope of replacing them with candidates who can be relied on to vote through further cuts packages.
We need councillors who can be relied on to vote against cuts – the recent moves by Unite to discuss disaffiliation from Labour is a welcome step to making this happen.